The New Growth Path: Miracle or Mirage?

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The New Growth Path: Miracle or Mirage? The South African government has embarked on a series of economic programmes to achieve job growth and redistribution goals. The New Growth Path is the latest: it sets an ambitious target of creating five million jobs by 2020. The Path contains some good dimensions, but remains largely a set of slogans: “green economy;” “knowledge based economy.” It raises some scepticism as far as its workability unless some targeted policies are identified, prioritized and followed through including coordinated monetary and fiscal policies, skilled workforce development, and targeted sector development. Precisely how important the various elements are is not detailed. South Africa: the Unemployment, Inequality and Poverty Challenge South Africa’s unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world: according to the International Labour Organization, which adopts a narrow definition of unemployment being “decent work”, in 2006 South Africa’s unemployment rate was over 25%, close to double the highest unemployment rate of middle income economies which is Poland (13.8%) and much higher than many of its Latin American comparators such as Chile, Mexico and Argentina (ILO, 2008). Also noteworthy is that these unemployment rates differ greatly by age: the unemployment rate of African youth (15-34 years) stood at 52.7% in 2010 (Dimant et al., 2010). South Africa also registered an increase of income inequality as the Gini coefficient rose from 0.57 in 1992 to 0.70 in 2008 (Du Toit and van Tonder, 2009). Despite the South African economy enjoying relatively strong economic growth during the first decade of the twenty-first century, the economy has seemingly been unable to create sufficient employment (Economic Development Department, 2010). Achieving full employment is

difficult, especially after